


All the Green in the Galaxy

by adventurepants



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 06:44:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7089721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adventurepants/pseuds/adventurepants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey did not know Ben.  She knows the ghost of him though, how it slinks around the house and waits in unexpected corners, makes Aunt Leia stop in her tracks and close her eyes for a few seconds, missing him at the strangest moments.  It makes Uncle Han gruff sometimes, makes him argue with Aunt Leia when neither of them has done anything worth fighting over.  They are always gentle with her, though.  The empty shape of their son is one that Rey can't fill, but they don't ask her to. (AU- Aunt Leia and Uncle Han take care of Rey)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Green in the Galaxy

i.  
  
Han thinks they shouldn't do it, that their home is, clearly, no place for children.  He's no good as a father- what happened with Ben wasn't Luke's fault, and it sure as hell wasn't Leia's, and that leaves him.  He knows what people say, that there's something dark in Skywalker blood, something beyond saving, but anyone who says that has never met Leia or Luke.  They're both so undeniably _good._   There's nothing of their father in them.  Whatever Leia passed down to Ben didn't come from Anakin Skywalker.  
  
He can't imagine raising another child, but Leia insists.  Luke is gone, and their niece needs a home, and Leia refuses to let the child go to strangers.  
  
“We're strangers,” Han points out, but Leia only glares at him for a long moment before turning to C-3PO and asking him to make arrangements to bring Rey home.  
  
Four days later she's standing in front of him, too skinny to be healthy and dressed in what could charitably be referred to as rags, but she is clean and sharp-eyed, and there are new clothes waiting for her in the room that's been stripped of Ben's things and a solid meal in her near future.    
  
“This is your Uncle Han,” Leia says, and Rey leans into her side like she wants to soak up the vibration of Leia speaking to her.  Rey blinks at him silently, not scared but wary, and he feels like a jerk for not going to Jakku with Leia to pick her up.  
  
“Hey, kiddo,” he says, but Rey just looks at him, still, pressed against Leia.  
  
“It's all right,” Leia says, and Rey, gathering her courage, takes a step forward.  
  
“Hi,” she says.  “I'm Rey.”  
  
*  
  
ii.  
  
Rey sleeps heavily the first night home- she would almost have to, Leia thinks, with how she'd been too nervous or excited to sleep much the night before when they were on their way here.  Leia watches her and can't help but think about Ben, and how his cousin is nothing at all like him.  Oh, she had loved her son beyond the telling, loves him still, and he'd been sweet as a boy, and gotten into about the right amount of trouble for a child who was half Han and half her.  But she had always sensed something in him.  She could use the force too, after all, and there was something inside of him.  A pull.  A struggle.  It grew stronger year after year, but in Rey... in Rey, there is only light.  
  
Leia is an early riser and when she wakes the next morning, the first morning that they are a family of three again, Han is still asleep.  There have been nights, since losing Ben, that they did not share a bed.  There have been nights that Han didn't come home at all.  But he's next to her now, solid and warm, and she feels a wave of deep affection for him even though their last conversation without Rey present had been an argument just before Leia left to bring her home.  
  
It's not as if she doesn't understand exactly why Han was reluctant to take in their niece, but he's wrong.  He's a good husband and a wonderful father and what happened with Ben was her fault, for not keeping him close.  She'll do better, with Rey.  Luke's daughter is her responsibility now, and one that she wants.  
  
Han had been good with her the night before, made her laugh at dinner and hugged her goodnight, and Leia knows they can do this, be parents again.  Love another child without forgetting their son, without letting go of the love they have for him.  Leia reaches for him across the bed and places her hand against his face for a few seconds.  He mumbles in his sleep as she rises and pulls a soft robe around herself.  “Come back to bed,” it sounds like, but she leans over and kisses his temple and leaves the bedroom to check on Rey.  
  
Across the hall, Rey is already awake.  Leia watches her from the doorway for a moment as she stands in front of the window, up on her toes as she peers outside.  She hears Leia and turns around, and she is so small and beautiful and she smiles when she sees that it's her aunt.  
  
“Have you been awake long?” Leia asks.    
  
Rey shakes her head.  “I don't think so.  I just wanted to look outside.  It's so pretty.”  
  
On Jakku there was nothing but sand, endless and ugly, not all that different from Tatooine.  Her chest tightens and she misses her brother—misses that feeling, almost twenty years gone, that the hardest times were behind them.  
  
“Are you hungry?” she asks Rey.  
  
Rey nods and leaves the window, swallowed in the nightgown draped over her skinny frame.  Leia is small but not too small to hold a child as little as Rey, and so impulsively she picks her up and settles her on her hip.  Rey's arms wrap around her neck.  She'll be too big before they know it.  
  
They sit in the kitchen together, and Rey eats like someone's going to take her food away from her.  Leia wants to tell her to slow down, her breakfast isn't going anywhere, and neither is anything else she'll be given to eat in this house, but she saw what it was like on Jakku.  How Rey had no one to look after her, how she was forced to scavenge for junk that she could trade for barely enough food to keep her alive.  A couple of the other scavengers had been letting Rey sleep on a mat on their floor but didn't bat an eye when Leia showed up to take her away, and it was clear they didn't care who Leia was or what she meant to do with the girl as long as she got her out of their way.  
  
What if Rey had gotten sick, Leia wonders.  What if she had gotten lost, or hurt?   What if Leia had been too late?    
  
It hadn't been hard to find Rey once she had arrived.  The people she spoke to at Niima Outpost hadn't been overly friendly but they had been willing enough to point her in the direction of the little girl without a family.  When she first laid eyes on her she had felt it immediately, something overwhelmingly tender spreading through her heart because yes, this little girl's blood was the same as hers.    
  
Rey had stared at her, her clean clothes and neatly braided hair, a woman quite out of place in this wasteland, and Leia had knelt down and told her, “Hello, Rey.  My name is Leia, I'm your aunt.”  
  
“My aunt?” Rey had said in a small voice, not quite daring to be hopeful.  
  
“Yes.  Your father is my brother.”  
  
“My father?” Rey had said, like she didn't know she had one.  
  
“Yes,” Leia had said.  “You and I are family.  I've come to take you home with me, if that's all right.”  When she offered her hand Rey had taken it immediately, holding on tight.  
  
Leia reaches over to push loose strands of hair behind Rey's ear.  She doesn't know if Luke was even aware that he had a daughter, but she hopes that he wasn't.  She's not sure if she could forgive him for letting this happen to Rey if he did.  
  
Han comes into the kitchen as they're finishing breakfast.  Leia had planned to be at the Resistance base that day—she was needed, as always—but she hadn't thought far enough ahead as to what they'll do with Rey during the day when they're working.  This isn't her first time as a parent, of course, but Rey is ten years younger than Ben so it's been a while since they've had a child this young at home.  Han could take the day, honestly, and Rey seems to like him, but this is Rey's first full day in a brand new place, and perhaps Leia is overly cautious but she wants to keep her close.  
  
“Morning, kiddo,” Han says.  
  
Rey looks up from the table.  “Good morning, Uncle Han,” she says.  “You slept a long time.”  
  
“I slept a perfectly reasonable amount of time,” he says, and then grumbles, “Just because your Aunt Leia insists on getting up with the sun every day doesn't mean everyone has to.”  
  
Rey giggles and Leia wants to bottle the sound, wants to make sure Rey is happy enough to laugh every day of her life.  
  
Han sits down next to Rey and elbows her gently.  "You didn't save me any breakfast?"  For a moment she looks stricken and he realizes his mistake.  "Hey, it's okay," he says.  "I didn't mean it.  There's plenty, remember?"  
  
Rey still looks unsure, staring down at the table, and he hooks a finger under her chin so she'll look at him.  "It's all right," he says.  He looks at Leia.  "I'm sorry."  
  
She nods.  It's all right.  They're going to be fine.  
  
At the base, it seems like word has gotten around- no one seems very surprised to see a small girl trailing behind the General.  They have plenty to say to each other about it, if the conversations that stop abruptly when she walks into a room are any indication.  She supposes it would be interesting enough, to an outsider.  Another surprise Skywalker, as if they just can't help appearing out of nowhere, once or twice a generation.  
  
She has never taken the name.  Luke is her brother, as surely as planets spin around their suns, but her parents were Bail and Breha Organa, her home was Alderaan, and she will honor them with the name they gave her.  She realizes- she hasn't asked Rey her mother's name.  She doubts Rey has been going by the name Skywalker, and the information turned up by the Resistance in their search for Luke had been sparse: a daughter, Rey, age five, alone.  
  
"Aunt Leia?" Rey asks.  "Are you very important?"  
  
"Important?"  
  
"I mean, are you everyone's boss?  They all talk to you like you're their boss."  
  
"I suppose you could say that," Leia answers, skimming over the report of another attempt to locate her brother.  It's pointless, she thinks.  He doesn't want to be found.  That they had even stumbled upon Rey's existence was an impossible blessing.  
  
"Unkar Plutt was my boss on Jakku," Rey says.  "Even though I didn't say I wanted to work for him.  He said I had to, if I wanted to eat."  
  
Leia closes the report.  "You don't have a boss here," she says, kneeling down to Rey's level.  "Do you understand?  No one here will force you to do anything.  Uncle Han and I will take care of you, no matter what."  
  
Rey nods and Leia pulls her into her arms.  "I promise, Rey, everything is going to be different now."  Rey's little arms wrap around Leia's neck and she holds on like she wants to believe it.  
  
C-3PO turns up to introduce himself to Rey not long afterwards.  "You're in good hands with General Organa," he says.  "Your aunt is a very capable caretaker.  It's a terrible shame, what happened with Master Ben."  
  
"Who's Ben?" Rey asks, and Leia shuts her eyes, barely suppressing the urge to reach over and shut C-3PO off.  For all that he can communicate with nearly every sentient form of life, he is incapable of understanding when to stop.  
  
"Oh," C-3PO says.  "She doesn't know."  
  
"Aunt Leia?" Rey asks, when Leia doesn't answer her.  "Who's Ben?"  
  
"He's my son," she says finally.  "Mine and Uncle Han's."    
  
"Where is he?  Why doesn't he live with you?"  
  
"Let's talk about it later," Leia says, her heart aching sharply in a way that she's grown accustomed to over the last few months.  "I'll explain it to you at home, all right?"  
  
"All right," Rey says, sounding unsure.  Leia closes her eyes again, letting the ache sit for a moment before she has to push it away.  
  
At home, Rey doesn't ask about Ben again and Leia doesn't bring it up.  They'll have to talk about it, and she's never been one to hide from what scares her, but she's simply not ready.  She needs time--and perhaps, for Han to be beside her.  
  
He comes home and brings Chewie, and when he says, "Chewie, meet Rey," he looks almost proud.  He looks the way he did years ago, handing their tiny, infant son to his best friend for the first time.  She is not surprised, not even a little, how quickly he's turned around on the subject of their niece after meeting her.  
  
Rey has never seen a Wookiee before.  She stares up at him, wide-eyed, and he must seem as tall as a tree, to such a little girl.  Leia catches Chewie's eyes and smiles at him, and he kneels down in front of Rey, still quite tall, and tells her hello.  
  
Rey glances at Leia and then back again.  "Hello," she says timidly.  "I'm sorry, I only speak Basic."  
  
"You'll learn," Han says, as if it's nothing, though it took Leia years to even begin to understand Shyriiwook.    
  
Chewie nods and says--she thinks-- "Don't worry.  It's easy."  
  
Han stands next to her and she leans into his side, relieved to have this comfort, the idea that they could be happy again.  
  
*  
  
At night, Leia wakes and knows that something is wrong- the way she used to know when Ben was coming down with something even before he started to complain of a scratchy throat, the way she knows that Luke is far away but not in immediate danger.  The way she felt every light on Alderaan go dark in an instant.  
  
Tonight, she feels distress radiating from Rey as plainly as if it were her own.  Her heart aches with it, a genuine physical pain, and she is up and across the hall immediately where she finds Rey curled into a ball under twisted covers, crying quietly.  
  
Leia gets into bed next to her and coaxes her to unfold her body and climb into Leia's lap, where she shudders as Leia strokes her hair and rubs her back and tells her, "It's all right.  It's all right.  I'm here."  
  
Rey clings to her, breathes in little broken gasps.  "Did you have a bad dream?" Leia asks.  
  
Rey holds onto her tightly and nods against her chest.  "Y-yes."  
  
"Would you like to tell me about it?"  
  
Rey doesn't say anything for a few moments.  "You left," she admits finally.  "And Uncle Han too, and I couldn't find you."  
  
"Oh, darling," Leia says, and kisses the top of Rey's head, wants to soothe away every ache in her tiny chest.  "We will never leave you."  
  
"My mother didn't come back," Rey says.  "I waited."  
  
Leia combs her fingers through Rey's silky hair.  From the information they'd learned it seemed likely that Rey's mother had been killed after Rey had been deposited on Jakku.  Leia wanted to look for her but they had nothing to go on- they would need Luke to fill in the blanks, and he remained inexplicably out of their grasp.  It was little compared to what her niece had suffered, but Leia felt abandoned, too.  And betrayed, now, by the secrets he had kept.  A lover (a wife?) and a baby.    
  
She can't bear to lose anyone else now, not after Ben, so she holds Rey and whispers promises that she will do anything to keep: "You will never be alone again.  You will never lose us."  
  
*  
  
iii.  
  
Rey did not know Ben.  She knows the ghost of him though, how it slinks around the house and waits in unexpected corners, makes Aunt Leia stop in her tracks and close her eyes for a few seconds, missing him at the strangest moments.  It makes Uncle Han gruff sometimes, makes him argue with Aunt Leia when neither of them has done anything worth fighting over.  They are always gentle with her, though.  The empty shape of their son is one that Rey can't fill, but they don't ask her to.  
  
Aunt Leia does Rey's hair in the mornings, braids it and winds it around her head, and Rey stands proudly in front of the mirror afterwards.  “We match,” she says, and Leia smiles.  
  
“We do.”  
  
“Do I look like you?” Rey asks.  They are family, and families look alike, and Aunt Leia is her father's twin.  
  
Leia stands behind her and looks at them both in the mirror, together.  Rey wants her to say yes, but she knows by now that Aunt Leia always tells her the truth.  “Only a little, I think,” she says, and puts her hand on Rey's shoulder.  
  
Rey frowns.  “Don't you look like my father?” she asks.  
  
“Not enough that you'd see it if you weren't already looking for it,” Leia says.  They don't talk about Rey's father, much.  Rey doesn't remember him, but she wants to know: is he coming back?  If he does, will she have to leave her aunt and uncle's house?  
  
Leia's hand is soft and warm and safe on Rey's shoulder and she seems to know what Rey is worried about.  Somehow, she always seems to know.  “Sisters don't always look like their brothers, and nieces don't always look like their aunts, but,” she says, and turns Rey around to look at her, “we're still family.  You still belong here, with Uncle Han and me.”  
  
Rey tucks herself into the safety of Aunt Leia's arms.  She wonders how Ben could ever have wanted to leave, when Leia is so kind and pretty, so steady and smart.  Rey never wants to leave.  She wants to stay here forever, with the sand and suffocating heat of Jakku a fading memory, where it's green and comfortable and she has a family who loves her.  
  
R2-D2—who had slept for a while but had, to C-3PO's great surprise, chirped back to life the first time Rey had run across him at the Resistance base—informed Rey quite cheerfully that children normally leave home when they grow up, but Rey had disagreed.  “I'm staying with my family.”  
  
“I love you,” she says now, and it feels nice every time, to say it and know someone will say it back.  
  
“I love you too, sweetheart,” Aunt Leia says, and they stand there for a moment until Rey is ready to let go.  
  
*  
  
Uncle Han teaches her to fly ships, and it feels as easy as walking.  Like when he tells her what to do it's only a reminder of something she already knows.  He says someday he'll get the Millennium Falcon back and she can be his copilot, "when this guy's ready to retire."  
  
Chewie warbles in disagreement, and Rey giggles.    
  
"The Falcon made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs, you know," Uncle Han says, and Rey nods.  He's told her this at least twice already.  She's not sure what it means but she knows he's very proud of it.  
  
"Where will we go?" she asks.  
  
Uncle Han grins at her.  "Anywhere we want."  
  
Rey thinks it over.  "Not too far," she says.  "Aunt Leia will miss us."  
  
The next day, Uncle Han leaves on a mission for the Resistance.  It's nothing dangerous, he promises her, but sometimes even the most noble of organizations require the talents of an experienced smuggler.  He'll only be gone for a few days.  
  
It's the first time Rey will be separated from her aunt or uncle since coming to live here, and she doesn't like the feeling she gets in her stomach at all.  She bravely doesn't cry when he's leaving, but once he's gone and Aunt Leia is going about the rest of her morning like everything is normal, she feels her eyes start to fill up.  
  
"Oh, Rey," Leia says.  "I know."  She opens her arms and Rey rushes into them.  This isn't like her bad dreams- in those, her aunt and uncle are both gone at once, and they don't say goodbye, and she is back on Jakku, searching shipwrecks for her mother.  She knows that her dreams aren't real, but this is, and Uncle Han will be back soon like he promised, but she still needs Aunt Leia to hold her for just a minute.  Just until she can blink the tears away.  
  
Aunt Leia is usually firm about bedtime, but that night they snuggle into Rey's bed together and Leia reads to her from an old book of Alderaanian fairy tales late into the night.  Alderaan isn't a place anymore, hasn't been since long before Rey was born, but Aunt Leia tells her that it still exists in the hearts of its people.  "There aren't many of us left," she says, "but as long as at least one of us still remembers, Alderaan lives."  
  
That sounds nice, Rey thinks.  Leia reads to her until her eyelids get heavy and the last thing she remembers is Leia singing softly, a lullaby that Rey hasn't heard before, that she thinks must be from Alderaan too.  
  
In the morning, Aunt Leia is asleep next to her, and Rey wonders if Leia misses Uncle Han as much as she does.  "Wake up," she says, nudging her gently.  "It's time for breakfast."  
  
*  
  
Uncle Han comes home right on schedule, late in the evening on the third day after he left.  "Uncle Han!" Rey shouts, running at him as soon as he comes in the door, and he lifts her up and swings her around.  
  
"Hey, kiddo," he says.  Aunt Leia comes in to greet him and he leans in to kiss her with Rey still in his arms.  
  
"Welcome home," she says, and Uncle Han winks at her.  
  
"You know I only go on trips so you'll miss me," he says.  
  
One of Aunt Leia's eyebrows climbs up her forehead and Rey tries to mimic it like she's been practicing, but she can still only do both at the same time.  "I don't miss you as much as you think I do," Leia says.  
  
"But Aunt Leia," Rey says.  "Remember the first night when you let me stay up late with you and then you slept in my room?"  
  
"Hush, Rey, you're overtired.  It's past your bedtime," Aunt Leia says, but her voice is still gentle.  Rey wants to protest going to bed, but she _is_ tired, and Uncle Han is home, so everything is back to the way it should be.  
  
"Will you tuck me in?" she asks him.  
  
"Of course," he says.  "What do you think I rushed home for?"  He carries her off toward her bedroom and she watches Aunt Leia over his shoulder as they go, smiling contentedly at the two of them.  
  
"I missed you," Rey says as she climbs into bed and Uncle Han pulls the covers up around her.  
  
"I missed you too, kid," he says.  
  
"I have lots to tell you," she says.  "I went to the base yesterday and I met a BB unit with a bent antenna, so I fixed it for him and then he followed me around all day.  And-" she pauses to yawn.  "And..." she trails off, suddenly forgetting what it was she wanted to say.  
  
"You can tell me all about it tomorrow," Uncle Han says, and reaches over to brush unruly hair out of her eyes.  His hands are rougher than Aunt Leia's but just as warm.  
  
"And we'll have flying lessons?" she asks hopefully.  
  
"You bet," he says.  
  
Satisfied, her eyes flutter closed and she is already drifting off when she hears Uncle Han say, "I love you."  
  
She's nearly asleep as she mumbles back, "I know."


End file.
